Building a Website—You Can Do It!

What if I told you that you are the biggest hurdle to creating your first website?

You’d probably dismiss this immediately. “No,” you might say, “I have all these technical issues to solve.” But you’d be wrong.

You have everything you need to start that website right now. And in this email, I’ll explain why it’s so easy and introduce you to WordPress, the software we’ll be using to build your website.

The information available on website creation is overwhelming. My mission is to stop “analysis paralysis” in all entrepreneurs and would-be website owners.

The paralysis partly comes from choices—there’s just too darn many of them!

Paralysis also arises from the fear of doing something wrong.

I’m here to tell you not to worry. Yes, you will make the wrong choices; you are human, after all. But it doesn’t matter. Mistakes can be rectified, and I will show you how.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is free, open-source software that is used to create 20-25% of the world’s websites.

That’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider that WordPress is almost wholly maintained by volunteers.

Given the highly motivated community behind it, WordPress provides an excellent and easy-to-use back end to simplify the complex computer code behind a website.

Using WordPress means that you don’t have to learn code—it does all the heavy lifting for you.

And if you have a problem, someone else will have had the same problem and a quick Google search will show you the solution.

Some of the world’s most successful websites use WordPress, from Reuters’ Blogs and Snoop Dogg to The New Yorker and The Walking Dead.

You can also use WordPress to set up a single-page website.

Don’t panic!

Websites are the same as humans: they are living and breathing, they can change, and they can improve.

You can change the design, content, web host, functionality, and even domain name.

So it’s time to stop analyzing and start doing. After taking this course, you’ll be able to do it.

Trust me, you can do it!

Allaying your doubts

Still not convinced you need or are capable of creating a website? Here are a few doubts you may have.

I’m not sure whether I should have a website: If you don’t have a website, you need one. I don’t care whether you’re at school, you’re working, you’re unemployed, or you’re Richard Branson—you need a website. Essentially, you’re irrelevant if you’re not putting out content online these days.

I don’t know which hosting package to buy: Yes, this is important, but you can change it at any time. You can either upgrade if your website increases in popularity or move hosts if you think you’ve made the wrong decision. The new host will sometimes transfer the website free of charge.

I’m not technical, I won’t be able to successfully maintain a website: You don’t need to know HTML, CSS, PHP, or be a technical whizz to be able to run a successful and beautiful website. I will show you how to do that with WordPress in this course.

I’m not sure what domain to buy: Yes, this is important. But as I mentioned earlier, it can be changed. I’ll give you some guidance on this later.

I’m not sure what design or look and feel to choose: Your website’s design is almost completely separate from its content. The design files (CSS) are different from the web pages’ content files (HTML). And don’t worry, I’m not getting all technical on you. But this means that the design can be changed easily and at any time, while the content remains the same.

The best thing to do is to get going. If you keep taking the course, I’ll show you exactly how. The next lesson isn’t technical at all, it’s about content. And, as you know, content is king.